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New Light on the “Chaldaean Oracles”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

E. R. Dodds
E. R. Dodds
Affiliation:
Christ Church, Oxford, England
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Extract

Hans Lewy's posthumous book, the fruit of many years' devoted study, should arouse fresh interest in one of the most tantalizingly obscure of ancient Greek texts. The Chaldaean Oracles were a divine revelation in bad hexameter verse; its authors were believed to be gods (speaking through the lips of entranced mediums?), but it was given to the world, as Lobeck guessed and Bidez finally proved, by one “Julianus the theurgist,” who lived under Marcus Aurelius. It is of serious concern to historians of religion, as the last important Sacred Book of pagan antiquity, and to historians of ideas, as one of the major influences which shaped the later development of Neoplatonism from Porphyry to Psellus. Unfortunately it has come down to us only in fragments.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , October 1961 , pp. 263 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1961

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References

1 Hans Lewy: Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy: Mysticism, Magic and Platonism in the later Roman Empire (Recherches d'Archéologie, de Philologie et d'Histoire, Tome xiii). Le Caire, Imprimerie de l'Institut d'Archéologie Orientale, 1956, pp. xxvi, 512.

2 See the texts edited by him in Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques grecs, vol. vi, and in Mélanges Cumont, 95 ff.

3 Lewy made or intended making a collection of the fragments, to be printed as an appendix to his book, but it appears that no such collection was found among his papers.

4 Kroll confined himself to a brief though extremely valuable discussion in Latin. Individual aspects of the Oracles have been studied by Bidez, (“Note sur les mystères néoplatoniciens,” Rev. Beige de Phil, et d'Hist., 7, 1928, 1477 ff.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; by Hopfner in his Gr.-Aeg. Offenbarungszauber and elsewhere; by Theiler (Die chald. Orakel u.d. Hymnen des Synesios, 1942); by Eitrem (“La Théurgie chez les néoplatoniciens et dans les papyrus magiques,” Symb. Oslo., 22, 1942, 49 ff.); by the present writer (“Theurgy and its Relationship to Neoplatonism,” J.R.S. 37, 1947, 55 ff.Google Scholar, reprinted in The Greeks and the Irrational, 1951, 283 ff.); and by Festugière, Rév. d'Hermès III, 1953, 52–59. It is unfortunate that only the two first-mentioned of these studies were available to Lewy.

5 False Greek words which may puzzle the reader include ἀγνεῖoν for ἀγγεῖoν (p. 265), ῤότιoς for ῤόθιoς (p. 277), σκυλίoισι for σκoλίoισι (p. 303), κλίσεις for κλήσεις (p. 469).

6 E.g. “second person” for “first person” makes nonsense of an important passage on p. 6; ϕωτί is described as an ablative (p. 11); the 30 books of Iamblichus’ commentary on the Oracles have become “30 volumes” (p. 68); on pages 10 and 88 the translation offered in the text conflicts with the explanation given in the footnote.

7 Since Porphyry is quoted as source for two oracles only, the natural inference is that the remaining oracles do not come from Porphyry.

8 Acceptance of this view does not involve identifying the Philosophy of Oracles with the De regressu, as J. J. O'Meara has recently invited us to do. Lewy in fact follows the opinion of Eunapius, Bernays and Bidez that the Philosophy of Oracles is an early work from Porphyry's pre-Plotinian period: rightly, in my judgment (cf. Pierre Hadot in Rev. des Études Augustiniennes, 6, 1960, 205 ff.).

9 Theos. 29 introduces the notion of a bisexual Supreme God, which I cannot find explicitly attested for the Oracles; and its description of this God as εῖδoς, ψυχή and πνεῦμα is at least prima facie inconsistent with the Chaldaean tran scendence-theology, though Lewy tries to reconcile them. Cf. Norden, Agnostos Theos, 228 f.; Festugière, Rév. d'Hermès, IV. 48.

10 Cf. Picard, Ephèse et Claros, 715 ff.; Nock, , R.E.A., 30 (1928), 280 ft.Google Scholar; Eitrem, , Orakel u. Mysterien am Ausgang der Antike (Zürich, 1947), 58 ffGoogle Scholar. According to Nilsson, “the authenticity of this oracle is generally admitted, and can hardly be doubted” (Gesch. d. gr. Rel. II. 458).

11 It is so understood by Wolff, Nock, Eitrem and Nilsson. Lines 3–4 yield little sense unless Aion is identical with the πατὴρ μέγας (for we surely cannot, with L., make έαυτόν refer to Aion). The αἰών and αἰῶνες of line 13 I take to be world-periods, whose sequence is governed by θεὸς αὐτός, the Supreme God Aion: cf. P.G.M., xii. 246 Αἰὼν αἰῶνα τρέϕων αἰῶσιν ἀνάσσει.

12 Dam., Dub. II. 21.15; Proc, in Tim. III. 14.3. This Chaldaean Aion strikes one as an abstraction rather than a personal god.

13 In Tim. III. 20.22, 43.11; cf. Simp., Phys. 795.4.

14 Kroll, pp. 24, 25,33.

15 I should except the anapaestic lines quoted by Eus., Prep. Ev. 5.8.10 (= Wolff, p. 159). Their content as well as their metre seems to exclude the possibility of attaching them to the Chald. Or.; for they are plainly a κλῆσις addressed by the magician to Apollo (and not vice versa, as Lewy tries to establish by juggling with the text, p. 59).

16 Cf. The Greeks and the Irrational, 295 ff.

17 Lewy relies especially on the rare use of the word δoχεύς for “medium” (in place of the commoner κάτoχoς), which he regards as a mark of “Chaldaean” origin. But can we be sure that it is in fact “Chaldaean”? It occurs in two of Eusebius’ Porphyrian oracles, and in a trochaic (and surely therefore, pace L., non-Chaldaean) oracle quoted by Proc, in Remp. I. III.28, probably from Porphyry; but not, I think, in any attested verbatim fragment of the Chald. Or. It is true that Proclus and other late Neoplatonists use it with reference to theurgy, but it remains possible that, like Eusebius (Prep. Ev. 3.16), they learned the term from Porphyry.

18 Gnomon, 12 (1936), 607, n. 3.

19 Lewy thinks (p. 36) that the Oracles were not a continuous didactic poem but (as the title Λόγια δι’ ἐπῶν would suggest) a collection of separate oracles given on different occasions. And internal contradictions are certainly easier to account for on this view.

20 Not, however, a symbolic suicide: I can find no warrant in the text for Lewy's statement that “it is the initiate who at the bidding of the theurgists buries his own body.”

21 Ct. Olymp., in Phaed. 243.4, where “theurgic” death is distinguished from death by suicide or violence.

22 Cf. The Greeks and the Irrational, 295 ff. Incidentally, I cannot accept Lewy's curious statement (pp. 253–254) that the soul of Plato became visible to the theurgist “as a geometrical luminous figure.” The geometrical χαρακτήρ was an evocative symbol, not a constituent part of an apparition.

23 Proclus, however, mentions two sources, Origenes and Numenius; and Lewy's grounds for excluding the latter (of whom Zeller, Cumont and others had thought) are hardly decisive.

24 Provided the term “Platonism” is used in a wide enough sense to cover Numenius, whom antiquity on the whole preferred to call a Pythagorean. But Lewy is perhaps at time s a trifle over-ingenious in identifying “Chaldaean” wit h Platonist doctrines. Thus I can see no close relationship between the fragment quoted p. 179, n. 8 (= Kroll, p. 26) and Plato, Tim. 41 d, or between the World Soul pictured as a girdle (ζωστήρ) and Tim. 36 e.

25 Cf. Theiler, Chald. Or. u. Synesios, 7. On Chalcidius’ use of Numenius see now Winden, J. C. M. van, Calcidius on Matter (Leiden, 1959)Google Scholar. Numenian influence on the present passage is strongly suggested by the description of the Second God as latorem legis: Numenius had called him ὀ νoμoθέτης (fragm. 22).

26 Numenius, fragm. 26 Leemans. His “First Intellect” is identical with the Supreme God, and this view seems to be implied in some fragments of the Oracles, whereas other fragments appear to distinguish them (Lewy, p. 322, cf. Kroll, p. 14).

27 Cf. Festugière, Rév. d'Hermès, III. 53 ff., IV. 132 ff.

28 Cf. Les Sources de Plotin (Entretiens Hardt, Tome V), 10 f., 33 f.

29 This is hardly disproved by [Plat.] Clitopho 407 a ὥσπερ ἐπὶ μηχανῆς τραγικῆς θεός, űμνεις λεγων ποῖ ϕέρεσθε, ὤνθρωποι …, where the implication is that such apostrophes were felt to be alien to the dialogue style.

30 Numenius, fragm. 39. His addiction to τελεστική (p. 100.19 Leemans), on which Julianus the theurgist was the great expert, is attested by fragms. 9 and 33.

31 Nicomachus, Excerpta de musica, p. 277 Jan. Lewy thinks the reference an interpolation, since Nicomachus “lived in the first half of the second century” (p. 250, n. 83). But the earliest terminus ante quem for Nicomachus is given by the fact that Apuleius translated one of his books; and Apuleius (born about 123–125) may well have been active quite late in the century (the date of his death is unknown). There is thus no difficulty in making Nicomachus a contemporary of Julianus.

32 Kroll's idea, that what lies behind the Oracles is the Zoroastrian fire-cult, is rejected by Lewy (p. 429, n. 104), I think rightly.

33 To whom we also, it now appears, owe the preservation of the de mysteriis (see M. Sicherl in Byz. Ztschr., 53, 1960).

34 On the textual side, intending editors should note his elegant and certain correction of the hopeless-looking line ἔννοιαι πατρὸς αἰδεύμεθα σε μον εἰλυμένον πῦρ to ἔννοιαι πατρὸς αἵδε, μεθ’ ἅς ἐμὸν εἰλυμένον πῦρ (p. 91, n. 97), and his ἄγκτηραι (or rather ἄγκτειραι ?) for ἄκτειραι at p. 298, n. 151. Several times, on the other hand, he prints (or his editors print) what seems metrically impossible even for gods, e.g., at p. 83, n. 62, p. 86, n. 74 (read θεοῦ), p. 191, n. 55 (read perhaps καὶ κάλλη ἄϕραστα καλεῖται ?).